Luxury timepieces a sight to behold (hktdc.com)


	VOILA founder Roger Khemlani finds Hong Kong the ideal hub for his original design Swiss watch business

	The ultra-chic Superstar timepiece available in diamonds or sapphires is one of the exquisite timepieces made by VOILA

Hong Kong-based VOILA Watches-Intertime (Far East) Ltd is blazing a trail in the global luxury watch market with quality, original design timepieces made in Switzerland from components sourced around the world.

Its founder and creative director Roger Khemlani - a 20-year veteran in the watch industry - said Intertime first started producing precision watch cases in 1993 and its R&D team designed and produced timepieces for many Swiss, American, French and Asian designer labels. In 2002, Intertime established the House of VOILA, a vertically integrated design, development, marketing and distribution studio producing original "wrist art".

Mr Khemlani explained how he came up with the name Voila, a French word meaning "behold" or "here it is" in an exuberant way.

"Whenever I created a new design I would show my wife and say, voila! what do you think? It was during one of our brainstorming sessions we thought about registering VOILA," he said. They did a global trademark search in 1997 and were surprised that no one had thought of registering such a commonly used word. "It was then that we started branding it on our designs and prototypes and finally launching it as our brandname at the Baselworld trade fair in 2002."

Efficient supply chain

Mr Khemlani said the House of VOILA has been a maverick in using globalisation to its best. "We are headquartered in the duty-free logistics and financial hub of Hong Kong. With its efficient supply chain we are able to buy steel from Japan for our watch cases, leather and leather straps directly from Italy and dials from Taiwan." To ensure it can put the "Swiss made" mark on its VOILA watches to add value and have global appeal, Mr Khemlani uses Swiss precision movements. Finally, all the parts are assembled and manufactured by highly skilled craftsmen from Switzerland.

"We have been working with the same Swiss vendor since the mid 1990s and we have developed a good relationship over the years," added Mr Khemlani. For the more fanciful designs, he buys diamonds from India and Israel and some of the precious stones from Thailand.

In order to survive in the competitive timepiece industry, Mr Khemlani is of the opinion that Hong Kong companies must move up the value-chain and create their own brand names. For this reason, he will not do original equipment manufacturing (OEM). "Being a Hong Kong company, we get numerous requests from leading global designers and brands to design and produce OEM watches for them but we refuse to do OEM business."

International fair

Many Hong Kong watch and clock small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have also adopted similar strategies, focusing on ODM (original design manufacturing) rather than OEM for enhancing competitiveness.

House of VOILA will be taking part in the Hong Kong Watch and Clock Fair which will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from September 5-9.